2. You Can’t Run Forever
2
You Can’t Run Forever
Theron
Little rabbit, you can’t run forever.
She had consumed a part of me that night; her full lips pinched together like she was trying to silence the sound of her terror. I wanted to elicit such beautiful sounds from those lips. Force them out with my fingers or tongue tongue— my scalpel . I wondered how beautifully she would look split open on my table, and her heart slowed down just enough to hold it in my hands as I gave her a new one. A better one.
I hummed to myself, imagining her blood on my fingers as I pressed them between her lips and let her taste how sweet she was. She would shake her head, tears in her eyes as she chanted to herself that this wasn’t what she wanted. She would lie and lie to herself until the pleasure drowned her. Yes, little rabbit, I could cut and break apart your body until your screams were a symphony to my ears. But your moans? Never before had I craved to make someone else fall apart in my hands from ecstasy.
I closed my eyes and smiled, remembering how her clover eyes widened in anticipation — in fear. I wanted to own that fear and use it to ensure she never stopped running. Too afraid to slow down, to give up and let the wolf consume her whole. With enough fear and pleasure, I could force her to run forever.
The memory of her trembling lips sent blood straight to my cock, and I groaned in frustration. I would have to corner her, set a finely made trap that she would walk right into and thank me for later. If I attacked now, she would give up the chase. Strike too soon, and her blood would be on my teeth before we could both enjoy it.
She’d smelt like cheap cigarettes, lavender and old books.
I tried pushing her from my thoughts as I cut through the man’s sternum, inserting the retractor to split the chest apart. Blood ran over his chest in hot waves, but I didn’t bother with it. He wasn’t meant to survive this. I carefully plucked a scalpel from the side, and opened the pericardium until I could see his heart.
“Well, well, David. Your worthless life will have meaning after all,” I said gleefully to the unconscious man on my operating table.
I’d taken him from his apartment hours ago after seeing him once more in the waiting room of the hospital. His young girlfriend had been brought in for abdominal bleeding, her cheekbones fractured, and bruising to her ribs. This wasn’t the first time she had visited the ER this year, and was always closely accompanied by David.
“A nasty tumble down the steps, the klutz. But you know, these damned landlords don’t salt properly.” He scoffed with his hands raised in mock agitation. “So when can we leave? The Celtics play at six.”
Jaclyn, his eighteen year old girlfriend, had miscarried their child in that tumble down the stairs. She shook in the hospital bed as the nurse told her the news, relief clouding her eyes as she gripped the white linen below her bruised knuckles.
“A shame,” the girl had whispered as a tear fell from her eye.
“A shame I couldn’t take your liver, David, but you’ve abused it for far too long. Your ticker, though? It will be given to someone who can actually feel love, David. A single mother of two, who’s miles down the waitlist and without money for the medical bills. Isn’t that great news?”
I smiled triumphantly with his heart in my hands. David didn’t answer me as I placed his heart into an OCS box that would keep it pumping until its new owner arrived. Tabitha was already on her way to pick up Ms. Alonso, bringing her sedated to my facility where she would be given a new heart and a chance to grow old and raise her children.
I smiled down at David’s wasted body and picked the scalpel back up off the table as I made a languid cut across his neck, feeling the rush of adrenaline as the blade sunk deeper into his flesh. He barely bled now without a heart to pump his blood to the surface. Most of his blood had already drained into the cadaver table that I use for harvesting.
Much like my little rabbit, this feeling I chased kept me from taking this scalpel and digging it into my own veins. The monotony of the world pressed down on me like the sea, rolling and forcing the air from my lungs until I was drowning in a white space. For as long as I could remember, the world felt cold and muted—no color to be had except for the blood I could coax from the flesh of another.
My adopted father had seen the signs, his own mind veering into the presuppose of carnal desire a few times. The two other boys he’d raised were fairly normal, sex-driven, and money-hungry, as anyone fed from a silver spoon from a young age would be. We’d gone to the best schools and been allowed to play sports and indulge our passions, but they’d always been different from me.
As an accomplished surgeon, my father could afford to keep nannies to care for his charity cases , as his friends had always called us. I was the youngest, and not blood related to the twins Orion and Dade. They were ruthless in their pursuit to remind me that I was different and an unwanted addition to Dr. Hawthorne’s home. When one day, their bullying had gone too far, Orion’s hands clasped too tightly around my throat until I could hear my own heart pounding in my skull; I raised the small pocket knife and slashed into his arm in a last-ditch effort for survival.
The blood had fallen over me like god rays, bathing me in a release I had never known before as Orion wailed profusely and ran to our father with lies heavy on his lips. I sat up, my tongue darting out to taste the warm elixir of life that I had forced him to hand over. That was how our father had found me in an elated state of bliss with my fingers in my mouth and my brother’s blood staining my expensive private school polo.
Instead of punishing me or having me sent to an institution for my proclivities, he channeled them. My father saw a glimpse of himself in the orphan boy, chasing the high of the attack, thirsty for blood. I was grasping for something to give life color. He shared a piece of his world that had been handed to him by his own father, bringing me down into the basement of his private practice and letting me watch as he cut open a man who had sodomized his child and been released on bail.
“Do you know what this is, Theron?” My father had asked as he raised a bloodied hand into the operating room light. He was holding a small scalpel, his finger pressing gently into the back of it as if it were an extension of himself.
“A scalpel,” I said slowly as my eyes danced between his hand and the open body on the table.
My father shook his head. “This is a paintbrush, and we can create a new world with it.”
We spent the next few years taking pedophiles and murderers off the streets, filling my days with medical school and moonlighting as a serial killer who chased the high of the kill. As a teenager, I hadn’t understood the significance of my father’s work; rather, I was letting my eyes linger on the long legs of the woman I fancied and imagined them twitching below me. Dangerous thoughts. Sickening thoughts that threatened to upheave all the work Father had done to hone a perfect heir to his blood-drenched dynasty of vigilante horrors.
On too many occasions, I had followed women home, shaking with the need to feel their hearts in my hands as I wielded that paintbrush like Picasso. My father had caught me one night with a syringe in my pocket and lust in my eyes and knew I wasn’t going for a usual hunt. He’d beaten me in the basement and let the blood drain onto the floor like he did to so many of our prey.
When I couldn’t breathe without choking, he brought his crimson hands to my cheeks and forced me to look him in the eyes. “Do you know the difference between us and those we hunt?”
I sputtered, struggling to breathe through the cracked ribs. “They’re — they prey on the innocent.”
He nodded. “They’re vultures — opportunistic monsters who pluck low-hanging fruit.” His fingers dug into my skull until I moaned in pain, and his dark eyes were glazed with unshed tears. I’d never seen my father cry and I knew I likely never would. He would kill me before I ever coaxed that emotion from him. “If I ever catch you hunting an innocent again, I’ll crack open your chest and stop your heart myself.”
I’d never looked at women the same way again, until my little rabbit wandered into the clearing and trembled under my stare. I wanted to see her open before me, blood across her body like the most luxurious and exotic of paints. But this was different. I didn’t want to end her chase, but to give her a second wind. A new heart that she could use to run from me, forever.
I threw down the scalpel and smiled to myself.
I’ll be seeing you soon, little rabbit.